Group’s Cluj operations hailed for technical, commercial and individual prowess

BETFAIR’S Romanian software development centre picked up three awards from the Romanian Council for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs), at a ceremony held at the Palace of Parliament in Bucharest on Friday afternoon.

TSE Development Romania, which is part of the Betfair Group, was awarded first place in the IT Startup category. The award recognises success across a range of criteria – including sales turnover, investments, job creation and the positive impact the organisation has had on the local community.

Furthermore, Oana Chifu, General Manager & Administrator of Betfair’s Development Center in Cluj, walked away with two individual awards, having been named Romanian Business Woman of the Year for Startups and having won the Young Entrepreneurial Spirit for Startups award.

TSE Development Romania has grown from 66 to 110 employees in just 16 months and plans to grow to 130 by the end of 2010. It is already one of the largest IT employers in Cluj.

The development centre is a key part of Betfair’s ever-growing technology footprint, at the heart of which is a betting exchange platform that processes more than five million transactions a day.

Betfair’s Chief Technology Officer Tony McAlister expressed his delight with the team’s success saying:

“As an organisation, we continue to reap the benefits from the operational excellence, development skill and passion for innovation that the Cluj team delivers. We are therefore delighted that their hard work has been recognised by the Romanian Council for SMEs“.

The British Ambassador to Romania, Martin Harris, was also keen to praise the work of Betfair’s IT operations in Cluj, saying:

“Betfair’s success in Romania is quite astonishing! The company based in Cluj, a city I regard as Romania’s Silicon Valley, has rapidly grown throughout the height of the global economic crisis, and now employs some of the best computer programmers in Europe”